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Here's some local and national reporting I found interesting. 1. Kerr county balked at the cost of flood sirens. [0] 2. Kerr county didn't alert all cell p

by bb88 1y ago

Here's some local and national reporting I found interesting. 1. Kerr county balked at the cost of flood sirens. [0] 2. Kerr county didn't alert all cell phones of the emergency. [1] 3. Kerr county repeatedly asked the State of Texas for flood help and the state said no. [2] 4. Kerr county was in the bottom half of property taxes in the state of Texas in 2017. [3] [0] https://www.wowt.com/2025/07/11/small-texas-community-where-everyone-survived-flooding-has-sirens-that-warned-them/#:~:text=In%20Kerr%20County%2C%20the%20price%20tag%20for%20a%20proposed%20flood%20warning%20system%20for%20a%20larger%20swath%20of%20the%20Guadalupe%20River%20was%20close%20to%20%241%20million https://www.wowt.com/2025/07/11/small-texas-community-where-... [1] https://www.nbcdfw.com/investigations/fema-records-kerr-county-didnt-send-eas-flood-warnings-phones/3882922/ https://www.nbcdfw.com/investigations/fema-records-kerr-coun... [2] https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/10/us/politics/texas-flood-alarm-system.html https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/10/us/politics/texas-flood-a... [3] https://www.uttyler.edu/academics/colleges-schools/business/centers/hibbs-institute/interactive-graphs/tx-property-tax-by-county/ https://www.uttyler.edu/academics/colleges-schools/business/...

arp242 1y ago
From that NYT article: "Some residents argued that outdoor sirens blaring warnings in the event of a flash flood would ruin the natural feel of the area that many prized. “The thought of our beautiful Kerr County having these damn sirens going off in the middle of the night,” one county commissioner at the time, Buster Baldwin, said during a 2016 meeting. “I’m going to have to start drinking again to put up with y’all.” (Mr. Baldwin died in 2022.)" I'm thinking hard here, but I'm reasonably sure this is at least in the top-5 most moronic short-sighted, selfish, brain-dead things I've ever seen in my life. Possibly even top-3. Yeah, I'd join Buster in the bar to drink ourselves in a coma.
- dmix 1y ago
  NIMBY is the most powerful political force in every western country. It's far easier killing off any new economic and public development at the local level than any national level environmentalist or small government movement could ever dream for.
  - arp242 1y ago
    This is not "NIMBY". Warning systems need to be where they're needed, and if that's your backyard then that's your backyard. Complaining about "damn sirens going off in the middle of the night" during a life and death scenario is on an entirely different level.
    - Spooky23 1y ago
      “Those people” probably live on the flood plain. Up on the hill, you don’t want to disturb your beauty sleep.
      - leereeves 1y ago
        Why do people live in the flood plain?
        Spooky23 1y ago
        The reason people have always lived on the “wrong side of the tracks”.
        leereeves 1y ago
        I've (almost) always lived on the wrong side of the tracks. I would never live in a place where the weather is predicted to kill me one day. If you can't see past poverty, I could just as well ask: why do people live in expensive homes on the sides of eroding oceanside cliffs?
    - kiba 1y ago
      It's NIMBYism alright. After all, if they're in your backyard, it's an eyesore, or in this case, an earsore.
      - intermerda 1y ago
        And what do you call this? https://www.texastribune.org/2025/07/10/texas-kerr-county-commissioners-flooding-warning/ https://www.texastribune.org/2025/07/10/texas-kerr-county-co... > “I’m here to ask this court today to send this money back to the Biden administration, which I consider to be the most criminal treasonous communist government ever to hold the White House,” one resident told commissioners in April 2022, fearing strings were attached to the money. > “We don't want to be bought by the federal government, thank you very much,” another resident told commissioners. “We'd like the federal government to stay out of Kerr County and their money.”
- jandrewrogers 1y ago
  In fairness, a similar issue has traditionally existed with tornado warnings, which they likely have in that part of the US. Most of the people affected by the warning are not actually at risk because the warnings are poorly targeted or the risk doesn’t meaningfully materialize. Over time, people get warning fatigue and they start ignoring them. It becomes a “boy who cried wolf” situation which makes the loud sirens that much more of a nuisance. The spam-y nature of many disaster warning systems is widely understood to be an issue. If these people have existing experience with other low hit-rate warning systems like for tornados, it isn’t surprising that they would find even more warnings to be a nuisance. The false positive rates that people experience is too high by an order of magnitude to be an effective system. If they have warning sirens that are ineffective at conveying real risk, they stop being warnings and become background noise.
  - gnat 1y ago
    I can't speak to tornado warnings, but here in NZ we've been getting tsunami warnings once every year or two and it didn't take long for people to go "yeah yeah yeah" instead of "oh crap".
  - whartung 1y ago
    Several months ago, in Southern California, we had a cell phone earthquake alert. Essentially it was “An earthquake is coming now, seek cover”. I picked up my phone, read it, gave it a kind of WTH look, and, indeed, an earthquake hit. And it was a notable quake. I rode out the quake at my desk. And that’s the thing. Where I’m at, we get hit all the time. Rollers, shakers, slammers. We had a week or so last year where we got hit by a swarm of a dozen of them. But they’re small. Close 3s. During the swarm, I felt for the folks about 2 miles away. All of them originated beneath them, so they were getting more than I was. So, it’s hard to take an earthquake warning very seriously. First, I didn’t even know we had warnings. Second, we’re (I’m) used to just riding them out. With that kind of warning, all we can do is duck and cover, assume the worst, hope for the best. I will say this, next time I get that warning, I’ll heed it. The quake that hit us was interesting enough to justify caution should they send another one, and, one way or another, it’s going to be over soon. So the overall precaution in response to the warning is quite low. On the other hand, we also get the flash flood warnings. They’re broadcast over a huge area, 95+% of which is, honestly, not susceptible to the flooding. These are long lasting warnings. With 12 hour durations. The most interesting one is the one for a local river basin. That warning goes off when crossing the river on the freeway. There are certainly areas susceptible to flash floods. Lots of mountains and canyons. Especially in the foothills in the deserts. Down here in the greater LA, Orange, Inland Empire regions, it’s less of an issue. 100 years of development, dams, and flood control infrastructure actually do the job quite well. Spamming us with flood alerts just numb us to alerts in general when things might really go bad.
- Henchman21 1y ago
  Well, you are talking about Texas.
Animats 1y ago
> Kerr county didn't alert all cell phones of the emergency. Might not have helped. Camp Mystic campers were not allowed cell phones.[1] [1] https://www.campmystic.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/FINAL-INSTRUCTIONS-2023-CMCL.pdf https://www.campmystic.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/FINAL-...
- mikeyouse 1y ago
  Staff surely had them.
- mulmen 1y ago
  If there’s anything I know about summer camp it’s that everyone diligently follows the rules, especially those regarding contraband.
  - RestlessMind 1y ago
    I don't know if you are being sarcastic or not, but most kids do follow rules. Only a few have hacker spirit, which should be over represented here on Hacker News, but is not that prevalent in society.
    - mulmen 1y ago
      I’m being sarcastic. But one hacker with a cell phone could get the word out.
vkou 1y ago
Kerr county didn't balk at the cost of flood sirens. Biden sent them 10 million dollars for this exact purpose, and they refused to spend it, because it would have let the federal Democrats do something useful for their constituents. [1] > "Accepting the ARPA money and putting our County under existing and future executive orders would federalize us and make us all slaves." These people are certifiably insane. The 10 million did eventually get spent on new police radios and bonuses for the sheriff's department. [2] [1] https://www.chron.com/news/article/kerr-county-flood-funds-20766069.php https://www.chron.com/news/article/kerr-county-flood-funds-2... [2] https://www.texastribune.org/2025/07/10/texas-kerr-county-commissioners-flooding-warning/ https://www.texastribune.org/2025/07/10/texas-kerr-county-co...
- Spooky23 1y ago
  When a state like Texas is so gerrymandered that no political competition is really possible, and ignorance is celebrated, why would be surprised that ignorant people elect stupid people to govern them? I’m sure that they claim to “back the blue” while refusing to put the communications tools that keep them safe in place as well. What people of this ilk have done to our nation makes me sick.
- DonHopkins 1y ago
  "Insane" is much too mild a word. "Sociopathic" is slightly better, but still not specific or intense enough.
  - SauciestGNU 1y ago
    Kerr county and the state of Texas murdered those people with politics. This is just one of the dangers of rejecting expertise in favor of demagoguery.
- jibe 1y ago
  [flagged]
  - nilamo 1y ago
Yeul 1y ago
This is why in the Netherlands they made a separate tax to pay for flood defense that the government can't touch. Because every time the economy went down the drain the first things that got cut from the budget were the dikes (it's no coincidence the worst flood in history was in 1953 when the great recession, WW2 and colonial war drained the treasury). And there's always another storm.
msla 1y ago
From my post the mods buried: > On July 5, as floodwaters were starting to recede, FEMA received 3,027 calls from disaster survivors and answered 3,018, or roughly 99.7 percent, the documents show. Contractors with four call center companies answered the vast majority of the calls. > That evening, however, Ms. Noem did not renew the contracts with the four companies and hundreds of contractors were fired, according to the documents and the person briefed on the matter. > The next day, July 6, FEMA received 2,363 calls and answered 846, or roughly 35.8 percent, according to the documents. And on Monday, July 7, the agency fielded 16,419 calls and answered 2,613, or around 15.9 percent, the documents show.

by bb88 1y ago

arp242 1y ago

From that NYT article: "Some residents argued that outdoor sirens blaring warnings in the event of a flash flood would ruin the natural feel of the area that many prized. “The thought of our beautiful Kerr County having these damn sirens going off in the middle of the night,” one county commissioner at the time, Buster Baldwin, said during a 2016 meeting. “I’m going to have to start drinking again to put up with y’all.” (Mr. Baldwin died in 2022.)" I'm thinking hard here, but I'm reasonably sure this is at least in the top-5 most moronic short-sighted, selfish, brain-dead things I've ever seen in my life. Possibly even top-3. Yeah, I'd join Buster in the bar to drink ourselves in a coma.

dmix 1y ago
NIMBY is the most powerful political force in every western country. It's far easier killing off any new economic and public development at the local level than any national level environmentalist or small government movement could ever dream for.
- arp242 1y ago
  This is not "NIMBY". Warning systems need to be where they're needed, and if that's your backyard then that's your backyard. Complaining about "damn sirens going off in the middle of the night" during a life and death scenario is on an entirely different level.
  - Spooky23 1y ago
    “Those people” probably live on the flood plain. Up on the hill, you don’t want to disturb your beauty sleep.
    - leereeves 1y ago
      Why do people live in the flood plain?
      - Spooky23 1y ago
        The reason people have always lived on the “wrong side of the tracks”.
        leereeves 1y ago
        I've (almost) always lived on the wrong side of the tracks. I would never live in a place where the weather is predicted to kill me one day. If you can't see past poverty, I could just as well ask: why do people live in expensive homes on the sides of eroding oceanside cliffs?
  - kiba 1y ago
    It's NIMBYism alright. After all, if they're in your backyard, it's an eyesore, or in this case, an earsore.
    - intermerda 1y ago
      And what do you call this? https://www.texastribune.org/2025/07/10/texas-kerr-county-commissioners-flooding-warning/ https://www.texastribune.org/2025/07/10/texas-kerr-county-co... > “I’m here to ask this court today to send this money back to the Biden administration, which I consider to be the most criminal treasonous communist government ever to hold the White House,” one resident told commissioners in April 2022, fearing strings were attached to the money. > “We don't want to be bought by the federal government, thank you very much,” another resident told commissioners. “We'd like the federal government to stay out of Kerr County and their money.”
jandrewrogers 1y ago
In fairness, a similar issue has traditionally existed with tornado warnings, which they likely have in that part of the US. Most of the people affected by the warning are not actually at risk because the warnings are poorly targeted or the risk doesn’t meaningfully materialize. Over time, people get warning fatigue and they start ignoring them. It becomes a “boy who cried wolf” situation which makes the loud sirens that much more of a nuisance. The spam-y nature of many disaster warning systems is widely understood to be an issue. If these people have existing experience with other low hit-rate warning systems like for tornados, it isn’t surprising that they would find even more warnings to be a nuisance. The false positive rates that people experience is too high by an order of magnitude to be an effective system. If they have warning sirens that are ineffective at conveying real risk, they stop being warnings and become background noise.
- gnat 1y ago
  I can't speak to tornado warnings, but here in NZ we've been getting tsunami warnings once every year or two and it didn't take long for people to go "yeah yeah yeah" instead of "oh crap".
- whartung 1y ago
  Several months ago, in Southern California, we had a cell phone earthquake alert. Essentially it was “An earthquake is coming now, seek cover”. I picked up my phone, read it, gave it a kind of WTH look, and, indeed, an earthquake hit. And it was a notable quake. I rode out the quake at my desk. And that’s the thing. Where I’m at, we get hit all the time. Rollers, shakers, slammers. We had a week or so last year where we got hit by a swarm of a dozen of them. But they’re small. Close 3s. During the swarm, I felt for the folks about 2 miles away. All of them originated beneath them, so they were getting more than I was. So, it’s hard to take an earthquake warning very seriously. First, I didn’t even know we had warnings. Second, we’re (I’m) used to just riding them out. With that kind of warning, all we can do is duck and cover, assume the worst, hope for the best. I will say this, next time I get that warning, I’ll heed it. The quake that hit us was interesting enough to justify caution should they send another one, and, one way or another, it’s going to be over soon. So the overall precaution in response to the warning is quite low. On the other hand, we also get the flash flood warnings. They’re broadcast over a huge area, 95+% of which is, honestly, not susceptible to the flooding. These are long lasting warnings. With 12 hour durations. The most interesting one is the one for a local river basin. That warning goes off when crossing the river on the freeway. There are certainly areas susceptible to flash floods. Lots of mountains and canyons. Especially in the foothills in the deserts. Down here in the greater LA, Orange, Inland Empire regions, it’s less of an issue. 100 years of development, dams, and flood control infrastructure actually do the job quite well. Spamming us with flood alerts just numb us to alerts in general when things might really go bad.
Henchman21 1y ago
Well, you are talking about Texas.

Animats 1y ago

> Kerr county didn't alert all cell phones of the emergency. Might not have helped. Camp Mystic campers were not allowed cell phones.[1] [1] https://www.campmystic.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/FINAL-INSTRUCTIONS-2023-CMCL.pdf https://www.campmystic.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/FINAL-...

mikeyouse 1y ago
Staff surely had them.
mulmen 1y ago
If there’s anything I know about summer camp it’s that everyone diligently follows the rules, especially those regarding contraband.
- RestlessMind 1y ago
  I don't know if you are being sarcastic or not, but most kids do follow rules. Only a few have hacker spirit, which should be over represented here on Hacker News, but is not that prevalent in society.
  - mulmen 1y ago
    I’m being sarcastic. But one hacker with a cell phone could get the word out.

vkou 1y ago

Kerr county didn't balk at the cost of flood sirens. Biden sent them 10 million dollars for this exact purpose, and they refused to spend it, because it would have let the federal Democrats do something useful for their constituents. [1] > "Accepting the ARPA money and putting our County under existing and future executive orders would federalize us and make us all slaves." These people are certifiably insane. The 10 million did eventually get spent on new police radios and bonuses for the sheriff's department. [2] [1] https://www.chron.com/news/article/kerr-county-flood-funds-20766069.php https://www.chron.com/news/article/kerr-county-flood-funds-2... [2] https://www.texastribune.org/2025/07/10/texas-kerr-county-commissioners-flooding-warning/ https://www.texastribune.org/2025/07/10/texas-kerr-county-co...

Spooky23 1y ago
When a state like Texas is so gerrymandered that no political competition is really possible, and ignorance is celebrated, why would be surprised that ignorant people elect stupid people to govern them? I’m sure that they claim to “back the blue” while refusing to put the communications tools that keep them safe in place as well. What people of this ilk have done to our nation makes me sick.
DonHopkins 1y ago
"Insane" is much too mild a word. "Sociopathic" is slightly better, but still not specific or intense enough.
- SauciestGNU 1y ago
  Kerr county and the state of Texas murdered those people with politics. This is just one of the dangers of rejecting expertise in favor of demagoguery.
jibe 1y ago
[flagged]
- nilamo 1y ago

Yeul 1y ago

This is why in the Netherlands they made a separate tax to pay for flood defense that the government can't touch. Because every time the economy went down the drain the first things that got cut from the budget were the dikes (it's no coincidence the worst flood in history was in 1953 when the great recession, WW2 and colonial war drained the treasury). And there's always another storm.

msla 1y ago

From my post the mods buried: > On July 5, as floodwaters were starting to recede, FEMA received 3,027 calls from disaster survivors and answered 3,018, or roughly 99.7 percent, the documents show. Contractors with four call center companies answered the vast majority of the calls. > That evening, however, Ms. Noem did not renew the contracts with the four companies and hundreds of contractors were fired, according to the documents and the person briefed on the matter. > The next day, July 6, FEMA received 2,363 calls and answered 846, or roughly 35.8 percent, according to the documents. And on Monday, July 7, the agency fielded 16,419 calls and answered 2,613, or around 15.9 percent, the documents show.